alohn84
I’m old school. I love when any team goes with throw back uniforms. I love Minnie and Paul (pictured on the right). 
I’ve been alohn84 since 1998 – and I know that style of name is old school. It’s humble roots are quite simple – it came from the initial of my first name (Andy), my last name (Lohn) and my number from football (84) – both high school and college.
In 1997 and ‘98 I lived in San Jose, CA – email was out of DOS mode and Windows 95 was awesome. Sites like Hotmail and Yahoo required usernames to contain numbers. I started using alohn84 for everything and I kept using it. Then, about 2007 (a little late I know), I started to realize that everyone had dropped the requirement for the numbers. I was still successfully signing up for accounts with alohn84, so why read the requirements? I started to notice most gmail accounts were people’s names – hotmail as well. I debated switching, but couldn’t do it – it was my identity and a hard habit to change. And how do I keep track of what sites I use alohn84 and what sites I use something different, and what is my new standard?
Then I started using twitter about a year and a half ago. I noticed I was one of the very few with a number tacked on to the end of a name. I decided it was time for a change….
SQL Feather and Quill
Recently, I was out for a run and was listening to a podcast from Endurance Planet. In fact, here’s the episode I was listen to – very entertaining. In the story in the second half of the show, there is a group called The Feather and Quill. I kind of liked it. I thought about it for a couple of weeks and decided that was it – I would now throw a SQL in front of it and go with it!
I’m now tweeting as @SQLQuill for SQL topics. I’ve kept @alohn84, but only use that for personal stuff. So that is my story – I may loose some whuffie by talking about switching twitter accounts, but I may gain some whuffie by explaining it. I may loose whuffie by talking about whuffie – do fight club rules apply to whuffie? I just read The Whuffie Factor and didn’t get that question answered.